Archive

2014 will be the year in which telecom will be split into two. The ones that understand iCommunication and the ones that don’t. iCommunication is about giving a personalized communication experience to consumers and enterprises. Low cost subscription models and freemium will be the main business models. Low-cost pay per use is still possible but not for messaging or voice traffic. The value proposition needs to be higher.

What will this mean?
Bit pipes will become a reality in Europe and possible in the US (mainly dependent on what Google and others do). Telecom operators massive head count reductions. Nokia & Blackberry will be joined by other one time big telco names. The end of the world for some. Especially for those that belief telecom is a dividend generator or a bottomless pit for license taxation…

For consumers and enterprises there will be a new world of communication possibilities. Communication will be fully integrated into back office systems, e.g. CRMs like Salesforce store all calls. Improvements in voice recognition will make talking to machines a natural interface. Managing contacts will become a breeze. Forget memorizing phone numbers…

Communication as a Service will be the big innovation. The Cloud, Big Data, IoT will meet IP communication. Whatsapp will have a bigger brother for voice and video. Unless Google and Apple surprise the market with joint IP-based communication over LTE and WiFi. Asia, Africa and Latam will have two more years but most of their operators will make the same mistakes as the European ones.

Bit pipes are not even a safe business because the Ryanair of telecom will be able to quickly pickup mobile licenses and networks of the third/forth player, the one that goes bankrupt.

Things will not look nice for the next three years for some but we all knew that it was going to come for the last 10-15 years. Any CxO that calls this an unforeseen disruptive technology should be fired on the spot. The next edition of the Innovators Dilemma does not have to go back to the last century for examples. This is a textbook case for MBA students for years to come…

Although I changed the focus of Telruptive to move away from trying to help the telecom operators avoid becoming bit pipes, I want to give them one last chance. I will be speaking at the Telecom Application Developer Summit in Bangkok. The summary of my talk on Friday is: “How to launch new telecom services daily…”.

Sounds impossible? I will be explaining how it can be done and doing demos. So if you are working for a soon to be bit pipe and you want to try to escape this fate, then I suggest you come and see the session…

Disclaimer

All the contents of the Blog, EXCEPT FOR COMMENTS AND QUOTED MATERIAL, constitute the opinion of the Author, and the Author alone; they do not represent the views and opinions of the Author’s employers, supervisors, nor do they represent the view of organizations, businesses or institutions the Author is a part of.

The Author is not responsible for the content of any comments made by the Commenter(s).

While we have made every attempt to ensure that the information contained in this Blog has been obtained from reliable sources, the Author is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information. All information in this Blog is provided "as is", with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or of the results obtained from the use of this information, and without warranty of any kind.